


Synthesis

by VespidaeQueen



Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Based on RP, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are all these things she knows now, things she saw in the future. Things she heard. She can look at all the Avengers and know where time might take them. Might, but she knows it is not certain. Time is fragile, and Wanda does not know if she has already broken it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Synthesis

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the continuation of a roleplay that is no longer ongoing. As such, the characterizations and time line come out of over a years worth of RP. While I have tried to get the most important parts across in this fic, there is a lot directly influenced by how things played out independent of comics or movies.
> 
> Here are a few of the major things:
> 
> This is an Avengers story taking place after the events of the movie, but highly influenced by Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the 616 comics universe, and even, to an extent, the Ultimates universe.
> 
> In this fic, there is a pre-existing relationship between Janet van Dyne and Steve Rogers.
> 
> Wanda Maximoff is a fairly new addition to the team. She and her brother are Romani immigrants who, prior to this story, had been part of the Brotherhood of Mutants. They had been very secretive about their origins, and Wanda has not disclosed their names to the Avengers.
> 
> Prior to this fic, the Avengers have already had numerous encounters with Ultron, including the one that resulted in the creation of Jocasta. However, they have not yet met the Vision. Basically, the order in which characters became Avengers is very different from the comics.
> 
> Also, in the course of the RP that took place before this, Janet "died" and ended up in Inner Space.
> 
> The RP event that this story spins out of took place when Wanda's magic threw her sixteen years into the future, into a world that was essentially in the Dark Reign period of 616 comics, though with a few differences, namely that Vision, Janet van Dyne, and Steve Rogers were all still alive. In this future, Wanda met her future self, as well as the Vision and her children.
> 
> This is a very self indulgent fic, in which I am writing out some of the things that I have been thinking about since this RP ended.

 She returns to the present much like she had left it, wreathed in chaos and magic. This time, however, she is prepared for it. She is not flung wildly through time to appear in a place not of her choosing; instead, time and space distort as probabilities rearrange around her, the combined power of three Maximoffs a crimson nimbus around her as she steps lightly to the ground. The grass bends back and away from her, and magic tears through the trees like a storm. A breath later, and all is quiet in Central Park.

Wanda Maximoff looks out upon her own time. The sky is dark above her, but she cannot see the stars for all the lights of the city. There is, for the first time in two months, a sense of rightness to the world around her. The strange feeling of being off balance is gone.

There is no one here to meet her, but she did not expect it. No one would have known where she had gone, and no one would have known that tonight would be her return. With a hand that only trembles a little, she pulls her Avengers ID card from the front of her red coat – the coat that will not be designed for sixteen years – and activates it.

“This is the Scarlet Witch contacting the Avengers,” she says, her voice strong. “I am back.”

 

*

 

They meet her at the park not ten minutes later. There is Janet at the head of the group, wearing an outfit that Wanda has not seen before – a gold leotard over a black suit. The light from a street light reflects off of it. And there is Steve, not far behind, and Clint. Two other women who she did not expect to see – the She-Hulk, all seven feet of green muscle, and a black woman in white who fairly shimmers with light as she flies.

Wanda does not see her brother. Her stomach plummets.

Janet drops from the air and grows in an instant, hitting Wanda with the full force of a Jan-sized hug. “ _Wanda!_ You're alive, you're here – when we got the call, I wasn't certain if it was really you, but it is! It really is!” She steps back, her hands still on Wanda's shoulders. “Just look at you! _What_ are you wearing? It's _gorgeous!_ ”

Wanda thinks of the last time that she saw Janet. Janet who was older by years, fine lines at the corner of her eyes. Janet who had found her when she was lost in the future. Janet who was still her friend, sixteen years from now.

“Thank you, darling,” she says. “You made it for me.”

Confusion crosses Jan's face, but a moment later she shakes it off. “Right. First things first. C.M., Shulkie, I need you two to secure the area. Clint -”

“Hey, boss-lady, let me say hello before you send me off to do something.” Clint steps forward. “Hey, witchie. Missed your pretty face around here. I'm so happy to see you I could just kiss you.”

“Please, don't.” But she laughs as Clint pulls her into a hug, one made slightly uncomfortable by the fact that he still holds his bow in one hand. “It's good to see you, too.” And then she frowns. “Are you wearing a mini-dress?”

Before the question can be answered, she is pulled into another hug, this time by Steve. “Welcome back,” he says, embracing her tightly, and then he lets her go. Wanda looks at him and remembers how tired his future self had been.

“The area's secure, Wasp,” says the woman who looks like light, who Wanda later learns is named Monica Rambeau. “SHIELD will be here shortly, though. Something about Central Park lighting up like a Christmas tree.”

“Ah, yes. That was me. But there's no one else here, I should have said that.” Her smile is gone now as worry claws through her. “I know there's a lot that we need to cover, but – please. I need to know. Where is my brother?”

 

*

 

For her two months in the future, four have passed here. Four months, and when she sees her brother she wishes that she had managed to make herself returns sooner, that her magic had brought her back to only moments after she had left.

Here is Pietro, four months after Magneto had found them and attack them. Wanda's last memories of this Pietro are of him reaching out to her in desperation as magic had lashed around all of them, his legs useless after Magneto had crushed them.

There are dark circles under his eyes now and he looks as unhappy as she has ever seen him. He looks old, like the months she was gone have worn on him. He can walk, but with great effort.

When he sees her, it is like something breaks in him, and she can see all the cracks.

When he hugs her, it is crushing and desperate, like if he lets her go she will disappear, and he buries his face against her shoulder. She sits with him, her arms around him, and she whispers to him – _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm back, I'm not leaving_ – and he does not cry. There is a tension in him that leaves as she passes her hand over his hair and down his back, and she thinks: _metal rods in his legs, months of physical therapy, he cannot run._

“I meant to return sooner,” she says, her voice soft, and a fine tremor runs through him. “I couldn't, and I am sorry, brother. This is my fault.”

“No,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. “No, never.”

Here are probabilities, endless ones. Her fingers runs through his hair and each probability is like a string, a thread. She shuts her eyes and grasps for one, hoping it is the right one. There is magic in her fingertips, chaos that becomes order. There is a possibility, one highly unlikely, that in an instant Pietro's legs will be like they were before Magneto's attack, strong enough to run on once more. Wanda reaches for that small, infinitesimal possibility.

And reality rearranges.

Pietro raises his head from her shoulder and looks at her.

“Sister,” he says, his voice still hoarse, his eyes wide. “What did you do?”

Wanda smiles. “Magic,” she tells him.

She does not say that she rewrote reality for him. He already knows.

 

*

 

He tells her, later, a little of what he has gone through. He doesn't remember much after she had lost control of her magic at their apartment, only waking later in the hospital to find that he had been 'rescued,' so to speak, by Captain America.

There is a false bravado in his voice as he speaks, and she _knows_ that he is toning everything down. He doesn't need to tell her for her to know the pangs of fear brought about by waking up in a hospital. For awhile, he says nothing of real consequence, but then there is a pause, a quiet, and when he speaks there is a raw quality to his voice.

“They paid for everything, sister,” he says. “ _Everything_. The hospital, the surgery, the physical therapy – the Avengers covered _all_ of it.”

Wanda wonders if they know how much that means to them, two poor immigrants who had been living without health insurance, betting on her magic to heal the worst of the injuries they might acquire as part of their job.

She hopes they know, and later she thanks them herself.

 

*

 

Wanda learns quickly that much has changed in the past four months. Thor has returned to Asgard, Tony is gone dealing with his own problems in California, and the gaps in the team have been filled. She-Hulk, of course, who laughs and thumps Wanda's back too hard and apparently spends the days she isn't an Avenger practicing law. The woman made of light is the newest member, Captain Marvel. Monica Rambeau, who Janet cannot stop heaping praises upon.

And then there's Janet. Janet, who is apparently leading the team.

Wanda finds that not at all surprising.

“I've only been leading for a few months,” Jan tells her over coffee two days after she gets back. “Steve needed...well. He had some things he needed to take care of that he couldn't while on the team, so he took a leave of absence. We had a meeting, those of us who were left and, well, I _may_ have nominated myself for the leadership position.”

“May have, or did?”

Jan grins over her coffee cup. “ _Well_. You know me, darling. When I want something, I get it. The boys didn't seem completely convinced at the beginning, but even Clint will admit that I'm doing a _fantastic_ job at it.”

Wanda laughs. “You're far too modest.” But her laughter fades and she leans forward. “You said Steve...left? I saw him the other night with the team, but...is everything all right?”

Janet draws in a long breath then exhales, pressing her lips together. “Everything is fine. We're fine. He left, but he came back. We're fine.”

That's far too many _fines_ for her to believe it, but Wanda doesn't say anything. Her eyes briefly drop to Jan's hand where it wraps around her cup, and she thinks of that Jan in the future, of that Steve in the future. She thinks of the wedding ring that only one of them wore. She thinks of a teenage girl with Steve's hair and Janet's eyes.

“ _So_.” The conversation change comes abruptly and Wanda wonders even more. “I know we're going to have to do an official debriefing soon, but friend-to-friend, how are you doing?”

It's Wanda's turn to draw in a breath. She traces the rim of her cup with the tip of a finger, looking down into it. The heart the barista had drawn in the foam is distorted already from the sips she has taken. “I'm...fine. It's...” She shuts her eyes and then sighs. When she opens her eyes again, she looks up at Janet. “I don't know how much I can say. I was in the future, Jan. _A_ future. A possible one. And it was...I don't even know what to say. It was strange and so far removed from everything I could have thought. One minute I was here, in this time, and the next I was in this world sixteen years removed from everything I knew.” Her finger stills of the rim of the cup. “How am I doing? I'm tired, Jan, and I'm still out of place, even if this time feels right. One minute I was just this new Avenger, and the next -” And here she cuts off her words. Too many words and she could change the future, and she doesn't yet know if she wants to.

But she thinks again of that Janet, the one in that future. Hair cut into a fashionable bob, clothing impeccable, still strong and smart and resourceful even when backed into the corner that future had placed her in.

Wanda leans forward further and looks at this Janet, who might one day be _that_ Janet. “But I want you to know something that I should have told you a long time ago. My name is Wanda Maximoff, and I was once part of the Brotherhood of Mutants.”

Jan looks at her, then reaches out and grasps her hand. “Well, Wanda Maximoff. It's good to official meet you.”

 

*

 

It's like one weight has lifted off her chest, to say that. She knows, of course, that Janet knew. That Steve knew. That they all knew, especially after Pietro had lived with the rest of the Avengers for the four months of Wanda's absence. But to finally give voice to the words herself is something else entirely.

But there is another weight in her chest, and this is one she cannot get rid of so easily. There are all these things she knows now, things she saw in the future. Things she heard. She can look at all the Avengers and know where time might take them. _Might_ , but she knows it is not certain.

Time is fragile, and Wanda does not know if she has already broken it.

Among all of these things she knows and cannot speak of, there is one thing that sits heaviest in her heart. Because she saw her own future as well, and some of the things she saw she wants so much that she thinks her heart will break for the lack of them.

A love. A family.

Pietro knows something is wrong, and he badgers her about it, but this is a secret that she feels she must keep from him. She remembers his words in the future. She remembers the arguments.

But she has a secret that sits in her heart and it leaves her reeling.

Wanda remembers a man who she has not yet met, a man made of metal and synthetic flesh. She remembers his dark eyes and his skin that was as red as her cloak. She remembers that when she was close to him, she could see little imperfections in that imitation of skin, the texture and speckles that dotted it, and while the red was an impossible color for a human to have, he still looked -

Real.

 _Alive_.

And he looked at her like she was the world.

 

*

Coffee is the best way to clear one's head and also to get acquainted, or so Janet claims. Two days after returning, Wanda finds herself in a small coffeeshop with the three other women on the team, one of whom is seven feet tall and green.

“New York just has to get used to all of _this._ ” She-Hulk makes a sweeping gesture at herself as she leans back in a chair that is not built for use by a hulk, a large cup of coffee with more sugar and whipped cream in it than Wanda had though possible.

“She's taking the city by storm. Almost literally.” Jan is all smiles, practically glowing with the intensity of her happiness. She's surrounding by friends, that's it, Wanda thinks, and she remembers – _you've been one of my best friends for the past sixteen years_. But there is a sort of raggedness around her edges that Wanda chooses not to comment on.

“I can see that.” Wanda smiles at She-Hulk, who grins back before downing half of her drink.

“You _do_ make the four of us instantly recognizable.” It's Monica who points this out, sitting across from Jen, a rather less sugar-filled cup of coffee before her.

“I _was_ wondering what we were all doing out in public like this,” Wanda muses more quietly to Monica a little later, when Jan and Jen have become engrossed in their own conversation.

“They forget sometimes,” Monica says, taking a sip from her cup. “They're both public with their identities. Mostly. We aren't. But they also bought our coffee, so there's no names to attach to us.”

“Just pictures.” Wanda has certainly noticed that, while it is a small coffeeshop, there are a few people with their camera phones.

“That's why we're sitting with our backs to them. Besides.” Monica leans back in her chair and gives a wry smile. “It's not as though _any_ of the four of us hide our faces when we're out there being Avengers.”

Wanda nods, but she thinks of a future where superheroes have to register with the government, where _mutants_ have to register, and part of her feels sick.

 

*

 

A week and a half after her return, and Wanda is strapped into a seat on the quinjet on its way to Wakanda.

Steve is flying and Jan sits in the copilot's chair, and there is an anxious tension in the cabin that has nothing to do with the mission.

Eventually, Wanda cannot take it anymore and she leans over to where Clint sits beside her and speaks in a voice quiet enough that only he can hear her.

“Is it just me, or is there a very _strange_ atmosphere in here today.”

“Strange? I dunno _what_ you're talking about, Witchie. Seems just _fine_ to me. Yep, everything's just normal as can be.”

Wanda raises an eyebrow. “And here I thought you were observant, Hawkeye.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Witchie, there's been a _strange atmosphere_ since Captain Glamour Pants up there got back from whatever secret thing he went off to do. I don't know what he got up to while he was gone and I don't know if I _want_ to know. But _something's_ got those two all riled up. If I _had_ to guess, I'd say they haven't been working off steam like they used to. Believe me, you'd hear if they were.”

That's really more than Wanda wanted implied. “ _Thank you_ , Clint. I really didn't need to know that.”

Clint shrugs. “Hey, you asked. I tried asking Cap Forties about it, but he just told me to get back to training. I think he sets the training room program to higher levels when he's _frustrated_.” He punctuates the last word with an eyebrow wiggle.

The sigh Wanda lets out is long suffering. “Look, Clint, I'm just trying to...understand how so much changed while I was gone.”

The relative good humor leaves his face. He is having, as Wanda has come to learn, one of those rare moments when he's actually showing on the outside just how serious and smart he is. “Hey. I'm not going to pretend to understand what you just went through. Time travel? That's some crazy shit there, make no mistake. But I know something about losing time, even if it wasn't quite the same as what happened to you. Jan knows, too. And, hell, I don't think _anyone_ knows about losing time more than Steve. So don't worry about being out of sorts and feeling like you've missed things you should have been there for. We get it.” And then he grins. “And hey, if you ever need a shoulder to try on -”

The moment broken, Wanda rolls her eyes. “Thank you, Clint. I will certainly keep that in mind.”

 

*

 

The mission in Wakanda takes longer than any of them anticipate, and by the time that they are done Wanda is _more_ than ready to return to New York. The mission had been a good distraction, something to keep her mind off of everything that had occurred in the future, but eventually all she wants to do is go home.

And home, now, is the Avengers Mansion. Home is nicer than anywhere she has lived before. Home is her own room that is larger than the postage stamp of an apartment she and Pietro had rented, her own room with her own bathroom.

The novelty of all of this has not yet worn off.

Once home, though, in that quiet lull between missions, Wanda finds she has too much time to dwell on things.

To dwell on _one_ thing in particular.

Well. Not a _thing_ , not at all.

A few days after they return from Wakanda, a knock on her door brings Wanda out of her thoughts. She rolls over on her bed and looks to the door. “Who is it?”

“It's Janet!” she hears through the door. “I have tea. I thought we could talk?”

“The door's open,” she calls, and a moment later Janet walks in. She's got two tea cups carefully balanced on a tray, which she sets down on the bedside table before sitting on the edge of the bed. “Well don't you look down. I thought I'd find you moping around up here.”

Wanda, who has returned to laying flat on her back on the bed, turns her head so that she can see Jan fully. “The Scarlet Witch does not _mope_.”

“Hmmm, I _see_. Does the Scarlet Witch want _tea_ , then?”

Wanda sighs and pushes herself up onto her hands. “What sort?”

Janet picks up one of the cups and passes it to her. “Jasmine. I seem to remember you liking it.”

Her fingers curve around the heated porcelain of the cup. “It's my favorite,” she says. Then she smiles, like what she just said is a personal joke. “It's vitally important that you remember that, my dear. Sixteen years from now, it will help to make me feel _so_ much better about everything.”

There is a smile on Jan's face at that, but her brow is furrowed just enough that Wanda can tell she is concerned. She picks up her own cup, holding it delicately before her. “Darling, I haven't been wanting to push this too much, because god knows I didn't want people prying after my return from Inner Space, but...”

“But you're worried,” Wanda finishes for her. “And I'm very grateful for your concern. It's...nice. To have someone to worry about me.”

“You _do_ have Pietro to worry about you,” Jan points out, and Wanda cannot help the face she makes.

“I _do_. But he's my brother and contractually obliged to worry. What I mean is it's nice to have a friend who brings me jasmine tea when she comes to worry over me.” The tea, when she tastes it a moment later, is just a shade too hot, but otherwise delicious. Half her enjoyment of jasmine tea comes from the fragrance, after all, and this one smells lovely.

“So, is this you telling me that you're gratefully I'm worried but to just go away?” There is enough humor in Jan's voice to make it almost sound a joke. For a moment, Wanda is tempted to say yes.

“No.” She looks up from her cup of tea. “But I'll trade you. An answer for an answer. You ask me what you're worried about and I'll do the same, and maybe it will make _both_ of us feel better.”

For a moment, Jan hesitates. Then she nods. The curls of hair that rest along her cheeks bob with the movement. “All right. Who starts? Do we battle to the death to decide that?”

“No, no! You start. Go ahead, ask me.”

Again, there is a moment's pause. “How are you settling back in to life here?” she finally asks. “And settling into the mansion in general. I wish we'd gotten you and your brother all moved in before...well. Before everything that happened. So here's me, four months later, checking in on you about all of _this_.” She gestures with her free hand to the room with a sweeping motion.

Wanda settles the teacup down on her lap, carefully cupped between her hands. “I'm...okay. The room is _lovely_ , Jan, really, it's better than any place I've lived before. This place is so much grander than I thought anywhere I would ever live would be. It's...a little overwhelming, to tell the truth. But it's good. As for coming back...” Her fingernails click on the side of the cup, a nervous little tapping. “It's weird. I missed so much. And I have all these things that I _wish_ I could talk about, but it's all future knowledge.” She gives a wry little laugh. “It's funny; everyone in the future tried to hide things from me to preserve their time line. They failed terribly, but now I've got to try to keep all these things inside of me when I _wish_ I could talk about them.”

“Maybe you can,” Jan says. “If you're careful. Is there something you really -”

“Ah, ah, easy there. I get a question now.” Jan sighs, but waits patiently for Wanda to figure out _what_ she wants to ask.

It takes a moment.

“How are you liking leading the team? Honestly, not what you'd say to everyone else.”

“Honestly?” Jan shifts on the bed so that she is sitting cross legged beside Wanda. “I love it. I love the planning, I love the leading, I love it. I'm at such a different point now than I was when the team started, and I – I can hardly believe how much I've changed.”

“But?”

“But I'm also tired.” It is an admission that Wanda had already guessed at. There are circles under Jan's eyes that she can see even with the makeup the other woman wears. “I'm so tired. I've needed a break for so long, Wanda. I -” She pauses, swallows. Wanda wonders if she's ever spoken this aloud to anyone before. “I should have taken a break, after I came back from the microverse, but I threw myself back into work. And right before you disappeared, when the Wrecker nearly killed me – I should have taken a break then. I almost did. I was a step away from requesting to be put on reserve status, but then...” The breath she lets out is heavy. “Well. A lot of things happened, and so _that_ never happened.”

Wanda feels a twinge of something like guilt. “I'm sorry,” she says, looking at her tea. “If I hadn't -”

“Oh, no! Darling, do _not_ apologize. It's not your fault.” Jan sets her teacup down on the end table. “It happened. Things happen. It's been four months since then, and there _should_ have been other opportunities to take a break. But then Steve had his thing and I took over as team leader. I spent a few months rebuilding the team after Tony and Thor left. And now we're here and things are still happening.” She shrugs. “There will be time for breaks later.”

Wanda reaches out and touches Janet's arm. “Still, I am sorry. That you have not been able to have a break. But you are doing an admirable job at leading this team, Jan. I had noticed that you looked tired, but also...you look happy. When you're leading.”

“I am.” There is a small smile on her lips when she say that. “I really am.” Though she's only just set down her cup, she picks it up again, sipping at it. “And now it's my turn for a question. Which is going to be kind of general, because I don't know what it is I need to ask, but Wanda, _what_ happened? I know there was _something_ that's eating away at you.”

Wanda freezes. “I -” What does she say? What can she say? How fragile is the future, that her words will break it? “I -”

What does she _need_ to say?”

“I fell in love,” she says, and the words rush from her. To say it leaves her heady and breathless.

Jan's mouth is open, her eyes wide. “ _Oh_. Oh, _Wanda_.”

“I fell in love,” she says again, a confession told twice over. The words feel more solid the second time, more real.

“With...with someone you met in the future.”

Wanda nods, each movement feeling heavy. This thing that sits in her heart aches, this little piece of it that she, somehow, unknowingly, gave away.

“I fell in love, Janet, and I don't know what to do.”

“Oh, _Wanda_.”

“I didn't mean to.” The words come forth, now that she's started there's no stopping them. “I thought I had offended him terribly, at first. I wasn't certain what to think. He was so _strange_ , like he knew me and yet couldn't stand to be around me. Like I meant so much to him, but looking at me was painful for him. But he knew _me_ , Jan. The future me. He said – he said that he didn't want to do anything that would change the time line and erase -” She stops. Inhales. Her heart pounds in her chest from the revelation of saying all of this aloud. “He looked at me like I was the whole world.

“I met him when he was already in love with me, Jan,” Wanda says, and her heart hurts. “And now I'm in love with him and I haven't even met him yet.”

 

*

 

That is time for her. Strange and bent, all twisted around. She wonders what it would have been like, to go on without ever knowing that one day she would fall in love with a synthezoid and marry him. That they would have children and then lose everything and each other. How it would have been, to not know all of that before she had met him in her own time line.

Sometimes, she wonders why neither Vision or her future self had warned her about how she would meet him for the first time. But, perhaps, her own time line had already deviated far enough from theirs that anything they would have thought to say would never have even come to pass.

 

*

 

Tuesday morning, she goes downstairs to make herself a cup of coffee and is greeted by yelling in the kitchen.

Well. That is not quite right. She is not greeted by it, more like she stumbles into the situation. And it is not _quite_ yelling, just voices much tenser than she is used to hearing. Especially between Jan and Steve.

“- if you have a _problem_ you _tell me_ ,” Janet is saying as Wanda opens the kitchen door. Her voice is pitched high and there is a harsh note to it. “I can't read your mind.”

“I _don't_ have a problem, Janet -” Steve's voice is low, tense.

“ _Obviously_ , you do, or else we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Is this about me leading the team? Because -”

“It has nothing to _do_ with that -”

Neither of them sounds okay. Neither of them looks okay. Wanda tries to back out of the kitchen, but Steve looks up and sees her. His words cut off and he puts up a hand – a moment later, Jan has seen Wanda as well, and then a careful mask of neutral emotion falls into place.

“Good morning, Wanda,” she says with false cheerfulness. “I was just leaving. I need to talk to Jocasta.”

She brushes past her and leaves the kitchen.

Wanda has _no_ idea what she has just walked in on.

Steve looks as tired as Janet does today, and there is tension in every line of his body. For a moment, he looks after Janet's retreating back and Wanda can see a number of emotions there, none that she cares to name.

“I'm sorry for intruding,” Wanda says after deciding that, at this point, she might as well just stay and get herself the cup of coffee she came down there for. “I assume I wasn't meant to hear any of that.”

Steve shakes his head and the expression on his face shutters. “There's no need to apologize, Wanda. The kitchen is a public space, after all.”

“Still, I should have gone back upstairs when I heard the...arguing.” She carefully doesn't say _yelling_ as she pulls a mug out of the cabinet. “It isn't my place to get involved, but...are you all right?”

As she pours the cup of coffee, Wanda looks up at his face. She's started to realize that, as much as he tries, he can't keep all emotion off his face. Right now, she thinks she can see him trying to decide how much he wants to say.

“Yes,” he says, and that's such a lie, it's such bullshit that Wanda could _almost_ laugh about it all. It's like Jan saying that she's fine when there's obviously something wrong – everyone knows that something's going on, but they're determined not to do anything about it.

“Really? Because -” Wanda searches around for sugar and, finding it, spoons it into her coffee. “- what I just heard didn't sound like _all right_. And I might not have been on this team for a long time before my little trip to the future, and I can tell that things here aren't _all right_. I've seen what you look like when you aren't okay, Steve, and while you're not there yet I can tell that you're getting close. Whatever is going on with you and Janet is affecting the whole team because _no_ one has been able to ignore it - and I have just _completely_ overstepped my bounds, so please feel free to ignore me while I drink my coffee.”

Her face feels like it has gone bright red, but Wanda stands there, stubbornly, drinking her coffee. Steve is staring at her.

She's probably gotten it all wrong, she thinks suddenly. She spent two months in the future, two months getting to know a Steve who is sixteen years removed from this one. She could have very easily just misconstrued _everything_ and -

Steve shakes his head, and where she would have expected anger, she gets the hint of a smile.

“Not exactly the morning I expected when I woke up,” he says, almost not to her at all. “You aren't wrong, Wanda. About any of it, I expect.” He leans back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest, regarding her now with a furrowed brow. “Did you just let slip another hint about the future?”

She thinks back to what she just said and lets out a frustrated noise. “So what if I did? Is it so bad to tell people that I ran into their future selves? And don't change the topic.”

“You just informed me that I'm not only alive, but apparently not doing well in this future.” His expression hasn't changed.

“You weren't unhappy the whole time I was there,” she says. She should stop talking, really. But there is a part of her that wishes that she could tell each of them the good bits she knows about their possible future. “It wasn't all bad.”

“Wanda -”

“ _Steve_.” She gives him a stern look. “We aren't talking about the future, even if I wish I could. We're talking about you and Jan and this team and whatever is making things all weird.”

“No, we aren't.”

“Yes, we _are_.” She meets his stare head on and doesn't back down. She's not sure why. He's _Captain America_ , and her totally time of knowing him between two time lines comes up to barely half a year. Maybe she's just fed up with all of the secrets she has to keep and doesn't want to put up with anyone else's.

Maybe it's that after taking on the Sentry in that future makes staring down Captain America nothing at all.

 

*

 

They end up taking a walk together, later that day. Steve's in his brown leather jacket, scarf wrapped around his neck to keep him warm. Wanda has a long red coat – not the one Janet made for her in the future, but a warm woolen one that fits well over her sweater. November in New York is cold, and she thinks that it could start to snow at any time.

She learns a couple of things on that walk. The first is that Steve Rogers has a terrible, hilarious sense of humor. The second is that he and Janet aren't having relationship issues. Not really.

“It's not something that's gone wrong between us,” he says as they walk down the street on their return to the mansion, breath coming out in white clouds. The sun is starting to set, but the streetlamps haven't yet come on. “It's more that nothing ever stops, and it won't. Not for either of us. We're Avengers first and foremost, and _that_ is what gets in the way of everything else. Sometimes, I wish things were different, but...” He shakes his head. There is a sad little smile on his face. “I'm Captain America, she's the Wasp, and neither of us want that to change. It just means that sometimes everything else comes crashing down around us, but this time it's making things...difficult.”

“I suppose you won't actually tell me what came crashing down.” Wanda doesn't expect it; it has something to do with whatever Steve went off and did while she was gone, and she doesn't think he'll tell her whatever that was.

“Sorry. That's classified.” It could almost be a joke, but she's pretty sure it isn't.

They walk for a time in silence, until they are only a few blocks away from being back at the mansion. “Do you want a spoiler?” Wanda says, before she can stop herself.

Steve frowns. “Wanda -”

“It might not even be a real spoiler,” she continues, the words spilling forth like when she had spoken with Janet about the Vision in only the barest of terms only a few nights before. “That was the theory, in the future, I mean. That each time line was different and set in stone. A paradox created when my magic misfired. No matter what I do now, there's still that set universe in which things happen like they did in the future I saw, though it might not be _our_ future. So it wouldn't even be a true spoiler, but it all would stem from...from now. Does that make any sense?”

“No,” Steve says. “Time travel gives me a headache, but...” He releases a heavy breath. The cold air turns to mist before his mouth. “All right, Wanda. Tell me your spoiler.”

“In the future, where I met you -” she starts, then stops. Oh, she should not be telling any of this, but she's all ready started to say it and might as well continue. “In the future, the happiest I saw you was when you and Janet were in the same room.”

There. That should be safe enough. It's vague enough to be taken however he wants to and doesn't address any of the many things that lead up to that moment she had seen.

Next to her, Steve reaches up and rubs the back of his neck. She thinks she sees him smile.

It only lasts a minute, because as they come into view of the mansion, the eastern side of the second floor explodes.

Disaster has wonderful timing, as always.

There are a number of things that she learns later on. How a dormant subroutine had been Jocasta had been activated, how the mansion's defense systems had been taken down. That they hadn't gotten any alert about it because of how subversive and invasive the programming had been.

All she knows then is that the part of the mansion that had just been destroyed is where Jan and Steve's room is.

Steve takes off at a run, with her right behind him. He's got no suit, no shield, just his strength. And Wanda...Wanda has herself.

That is all she needs, truly.

They reach the mansion to find the gates sealed tight. Steve swears, harsher than anything she's heard him say before. Wanda can see more light behind the walls that surround the mansion, energy being discharged.

“Boost me over the wall,” she says. “Steve, get me over the wall and -”

She doesn't even need to finish her sentence. Steve nods and the next moment she steps onto his hands.

The next, momentum and magic take her over the wall.

She drops lightly to the ground, her magic slowing her descent. The garden is a mess, rubble from the ruined wing of the mansion strew across it.

Jan is on the ground less than twenty feet from her. She is out of costume, feet bare. She looks shaken, but not injured. Her head snaps up, eyes locking with Wanda's.

“Wanda! Behind you, it's some sort of unearthly vision -”

She turns, and as she does her heart does something. Flips, shatters, drops right out of her chest – none of those are quite the right metaphor, but her heart hurts and wants and aches. For a moment, she looks the Vision in the face and sees nothing there, not the slightest bit of humanity, and the next moment he steps right through her.

It takes her a moment to understand what is happening. A moment for her to catch her breath, a moment for her head to understand what her heart does not. She turns as though moving though something is holding her back, and the bright light of energy that cuts through the darkening garden tells her what is happening. She sees Janet's hands light up with bioelectricity, sees the jewel on Vision's forehead flash, sees him attack her friend, and she understands why no one told her how they met.

She might have first him when he knew her and loved her, but when he first met her, he was the villain.

And there is truly only one way that she can react to this situation.

A swath of vermillion light cuts through the air. The synthezoid halts and he turns to look at her. Wanda keeps her hands raised before her, magic thick in the air around her.

“Get away from her,” she says, and try as she might to make it otherwise, her voice is thick with emotion. “I do not know why you are attacking my friend, but you will _not_ hurt her.”

“ _You will not stand in my way.”_

It is his voice, the same one she remembers from the future. This is the Vision.

She had thought of how she might meet him, in this time line. Wondered about it, how it could happen. She imagined meeting him on a mission, the two of them fighting at each other's side. Of perhaps being introduced to him through some hero she had yet to meet. She had imagined anything but what happens: the magic and energy thrown across the garden at each other, the way his face looks in the darkness as her magic lights it up. She had not imagined how they fight, tearing up the ground with each attack. How Janet's stings and her magic fall upon the Vision, driving him back. How he goes incorporeal and drops through the ground to reappear close to her, his hand inches from her heart.

Her magic burns him then.

“Please,” she says, and her voice cracks. “Please, stop this, Vision.”

This close, she sees his eyes widen.

“ _You speak as though you know me,_ ” he says, the mechanical buzz to his words so familiar.

“I know that this isn't you. What you're doing now -”

“ _Scarlet Witch,_ get _down_!”

She hears Steve's voice only seconds before she hears the sound of metal slicing through the air. She drops to the ground as his shield spins past her.

She waits for the sound of it hitting Vision, but instead what she hears is it rebound off the stone of the fence.

 _“You don't have to do this!”_ she calls out as Vision turns his attention to Steve. She doesn't know if she is speaking to Vision or to Steve. But Vision pauses. Stops. He looks confused.

Behind her, Wanda hears Janet speak.

“C.M., we need you _now_.”

Wanda does not hear the response; she knows that Monica wasn't even in New York today, gone to visit her family. But a moment later everything lights up, so bright that Wanda blinks back stars.

When her eyes readjust, the Vision lies sprawled across the ground and Monica stands there, still wreathed in light. Steve gets up from where he was thrown, and Janet grows back to full size, her feet still bare on the cold ground.

“What did you do to him?” Wanda finds herself asking, stepping towards him.

“I changed my form to the same wavelength he was functioning on,” Monica tells her, hands braced on her hips, looking down on the synthezoid. “It should have taken out all of his major functions.”

On the ground, the Vision twitches, his eyes flickering open and shut. Wanda drops to her knees beside him, one hand splayed over his chest, magic caught there.

“I know you,” she says. “I _know you_. You are more than your programming.”

His hand raises, grasps at nothing. His eyes lock with hers.

“Tell us who sent you,” she says. He blinks.

“Wanda,” she hears Janet say from behind her. “Step away from him.”

She does not look up, keeps her eyes locked with his. She still holds magic in her fingertips, right over his synthetic heart.

“No,” she says, and does not move.

 

*

 

They call in Hank Pym to take a look at him, as well as at Jocasta and the security system – he finds Ultron coding in all of them. Janet is like a taught bowstring, barely contained worry and tension. Out of the corner of her eye, Wanda sees Steve say something to her, his hand on her shoulder. Maybe, just maybe, some of the tension eases.

But for Wanda, it does not. She watches as Pym examines Vision, the synthezoid allowing him to open up his body, look into the hardware that makes him up.

“He's _fascinating_ ,” Pym says, though she notices that his hands shake just the slightest. “He has Ultron coding in his programming, but the rest of him – he's not based on any design of mine. If I had to make a guess, I would say that he's based on someone else's designs, neither mine or Ultron's.”

“What does that mean?” Wanda cannot stop staring at Vision, at the plate that Pym has removed to expose the circuitry in his brain.

“Well.” Pym checks something on his computer, making a few notes. “You've met Jocasta, yes? She's Ultron technology – my technology, technically. She's based on my designs, with a number of modifications. Her mind is based on Janet's, of course, but all of her hardware? All based on my designs. But this one, oh, he's simply _fascinating_. Look here, you see this?” He gestures to something, and Wanda feels intensely uncomfortable looking at the inside of Vision's brain. “This isn't mine. Just look at the complexity of it!” He looks up, his eyes bright. “Physically, aside from being made of metal and synthetic elements, he is every inch a man. A purely synthetic human being.”

“ _I am able to hear everything you are saying_.”

Wanda gives a jump, not expecting him to be activated while Pym was picking away at his inner workings. Perhaps she should not have been surprised. “Vision! I did not know you were...awake.”

Vision turns his head so that he can see her fully. “ _You continue to call me that. Why?_ ”

Wanda's mouth opens and then she closes it. A feeling of embarrassment swims across her cheeks. “It is not your name?”

His head tips to the side, dark eyes searching her face. “ _I do not have a name. But...Vision. It is an acceptable one._ ”

 

*

 

Janet finds her later and the look on her face is dangerous.

“Tell me why we are harboring a piece of Ultron technology that just attacked us,” she says, no preamble, no gentleness in her voice. This is the Wasp, leader of the Avengers, speaking to her, not her friend Janet. This is someone who has been hurt by Ultron many times over, and Wanda's heart cringes in her chest, but she stands up, tall and strong.

“He is not a piece of technology. He is as much a person as Jocasta is.”

Janet's jaw is set tightly. “He attacked the mansion. He attempted to kill me. Give me a reason why he should be allowed to remain here.”

Wanda raises her chin. “I _know_ that he is more than the coding that Ultron placed into him. Just as Jocasta is.”

“He is _not_ Jocasta.”

“No,” she agrees. “He is not. But he stopped, Janet. Right before Monica took him out, he stopped.”

Janet looks at her, her eyes hard.

“Have you spoken to him?” Wanda presses forward. “Speak to him, please. I know what Ultron means to you, Janet, but he is not Ultron.”

 

*

 

When Janet leaves, eventually, Wanda does not know if her words have made any impression. But, later still, she passes her in the hall and the Wasp says one thing to her.

“He is not Ultron.”

 

*

 

In the morning, Wanda makes her way to where the Vision waits. He sits there, in a chair, too straight and still, but when she lingers in the doorway he turns his head to look at her.

“ _Scarlet Witch_ ,” he says. “ _You have come to see me?_ ”

“I have.” She smiles while her heart is racing in her chest. “How are you, Vision?”

Vision looks from her down to his hands, which have been left free. “ _I am not confined here, much to my surprise,_ ” he tells her. “ _The Wasp spoke to me for some time, and we have come to an agreement._ ”

“An agreement?”

“ _Yes._ ” He inclines his head. “ _I will be allowed to remain here, free, but in return I will provide all assistance that I can to determine where Ultron is, and how he managed to activate his programming within this compound_.”

It is more than Wanda had expected.

“That is good,” she says, stepping more fully into the room. “I...had hope this would end...well, this has turned out much better than I had thought it would when you attacked us.”

Vision looks up at her, eyes searching. “ _You continue to speak as though you know me_ ,” he says, and there is a note of wonder. “ _And you seem to have no ill-will towards me. Why is this?”_

Wanda smiles. “I simply believe that there is much more to you than coding. As for knowing you? No, I don't know you. Not yet.”

Which is the truth.

It is her turn to keep secrets. No one had told her how she was to meet him, or how to get through this. But, she hopes, that this secret that she knows is something that will come to pass. Until it does, she will keep it tucked away in her heart.


End file.
